When a color photographic silver halide light-sensitive material (hereinafter sometimes referred to merely as a "light-sensitive material") is exposed to light and then color-developed, an oxidized aromatic primary amine developing agent reacts with a dye-forming coupler to form a color image. In this method, color reproduction is usually achieved by the subtractive color process; that is, for reproduction of blue, green and red, dyes of cyan, magenta and yellow in complementary relation to red, green and blue, respectively, are formed.
Phenols and naphthols are widely used as cyan dye-forming couplers. Conventional phenols and naphthols, however, have a disadvantage in that color images derived therefrom are inferior in storage stability. For example, color images derived from a 2-acylaminophenol cyan coupler described in U.S. Pat. Nos. 2,367,531 and 2,423,730 are generally inferior in heat-fastness. Color images derived from a 2,5-diacylaminophenol cyan coupler described in U.S. Pat. Nos. 2,369,929 and 2,772,162 are generally inferior in light-fastness. A 1-hydroxy-2-naphthamide cyan coupler can provide only color images which are generally inferior in both light-fastness and heat-fastness.
It is said that a 2,5-diacylaminophenol cyan coupler described in U.S. Pat. No. 4,124,396, Japanese Patent Application (OPI) Nos. 155538/82 and 157246/82 (the term "OPI" as used herein refers to a "published unexamined Japanese patent application"), etc., is improved over the above-described commonly used cyan couplers in respect of fastness and solubility in high boiling organic solvents. This improvement, however, is not sufficiently satisfactory; the cyan coupler can provide only color images which cannot be stored stably for long periods of time and when added to photographic emulsions, it is likely to crystallize. Furthermore, the cyan coupler has a disadvantage of being expensive; that is, the phenol compound to be reacted with .alpha.-halocarboxylic acid or its ester to form a ballast group is not commercially available and requires some reaction steps for the synthesis thereof, resulting in an increase in production costs.